Monastery of Faneromeni

Tucked into a cave southwest of the broad, thick-sand bay near Ierapetra in Crete's Lasithi region, the Monastery of Faneromeni, known locally as Panagia ton Gournion, grew from a place of quiet discovery. In the 15th century an icon of the Virgin Mary was found here, and that finding prompted the building of a church and then a monastery around it. The catholicon itself sits within the cave, dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, a shrine where Byzantine devotion and the island's landscape meet.